The philosophy behind Koi
As explained in the Koi project page, Koi is going to be a package for writing knowledge-oriented applications in Ruby. It is based on a theory of knowledge, which mainly describes how we can use complex spatial facilities, called "knowledge spaces", in order to help people harness their individual knowledge for the benefit of all kind of organizations or collectives that they belong to. This area of the Koi project pages, will attempt to describe this theory. By taking advantage of the high readability of Ruby code, the code itself will be used to illustrate the algorithmic aspects of the theory. The rest of it will be explained in plain English (as much as possible). Motivation Knowledge management and knowledge management software tools gain increasing interest in the last few years. The understanding that "knowledge is power" and the tendency to look at knowledge as a valuable asset, give rise to a growing effort to find ways to better manage knowledge so that it can be better utilized. The main motivation for the development of Koi is to try and harness a theoretical model of knowledge and knowledge management, to create practical KM applications, while at the same time help clarifying some of the issues related to it. The latter is important because much of the success of KM solutions depends on the proper understanding of users as to how they may (and may not) be used. Knowledge defined In order to establish a theory of knowledge, we must first define what knowledge is. Koi is based on a very clear and simple definition of knowledge: Knowledge is information, organized in a way that, together with skill and experience, enable better decision making When using this definition of knowledge, it is easy to understand that knowledge is in fact a very personal thing. The way information is organized into knowledge in our mind, and the accommodating sensation of knowing, is almost entirely based on our personal skills, experience and the kind of decisions we have to make. Understanding that, we must ask ourself if it is possible to manage or share knowledge at all? Well the answer is quite simply that it is not possible, and that this is why KM systems which are not based on this understanding tend to fail. So what can we do? The simple answer is that we can certainly share and manage information and that information is indeed what we manage and share when we think we manage and share knowledge. However, if this was the whole answer then there was not much point in developing KM solutions, including Koi. Fortunately there is more to it, as explained below Knowledge-spaces sharing, not knowledge sharing As explained in the beginning of this page, Koi is based on the creation of complex spatial facilities, called knowledge spaces. I use the term "facility" here because knowledge spaces are indeed like buildings or road infrastructures that can - and are meant to - be shared by the individual members of organizations, or collectives. Knowledge spaces may be considered as an extension of knowledge into a collective space, that is they organize information in a way that together with the individual skills and experience of the members of the group, enable the group to make better collective decisions The three levels of knowledge utilization Knowledge is beneficial in three levels, competency, trust and harmony. The two higher levels seem to have the attributes of their preceding layers, but as explained below, this may be somewhat misleading. To understand the true relation between the three levels we have to look first into each of them: Competency The first level is about how each knowledgeable individual utilizes its individual knowledge in order to better perform in its own realm. Competency, thus, is something highly individual and non-emulative. You cannot learn how to dance my merely watching a master dancer... Trust Trust is the way individuals utilize their knowledge to enable cooperation in small groups (usually one-on-one). Trust is based on knowing that the other individuals know a certain thing without having to know exactly what they know. Category:Koi